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Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Creative
Craft
Two
Crafts
Without
Lifts
Life
Skill
World
Skills
Floundering
Essence
Combining
Leave
Eager
Passion
Lift

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.
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Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come.
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Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU.
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Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.
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In the end all collaborations are love stories.
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when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.
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If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion
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My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment, which is a good thing for someone who still thinks of themselves as a very basic American.
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Energy and time are finite resources conserving them is very important.
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You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.
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Concentrate: you can't have it all.
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If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.
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When I'm in the studio, when I'm warm, when I'm what people call improvising, I feel a very special connection. I feel the most right. I don't want to become too mystic about this, but things feel as though they're in the best order at that particular moment.
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I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
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Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better.
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By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.
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Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas.
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Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.
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No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.
Twyla Tharp
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I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
Twyla Tharp